Linux Cluster Supercomputer Performs Surgery on Dog

An anonymous reader writes "In April, the Lonestar supercomputer, a Dell Linux Cluster with 5,840 processors at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, performed laser surgery on a dog in Houston without the intervention of a surgeon. The article describes the process: 'The treatment itself is broken into four stages: 1) Lonestar instructs the laser to heat the domain with a non-damaging calibration pulse; 2) the thermal MRI acquires baseline images of the heating and cooling of the patient's tissue for model calibration; 3) Lonestar inputs this patient-specific information and recomputes the optimal power profile for the rest of the treatments; and 4) surgery begins, with remote visualizations and evolving predictions continuing throughout the procedure.'"

Comments

New Robot Overlords

[backtick]

Wow, how about bowing down before a cluster of those? Heheh. Mixing the memes, sorry...

The dog died.

[cduffy]

...and they bury that very far down in TFA. The question, of course, is whether that was the planned outcome; I'd like to see it answered a little more explicitly.

If it is the intended outcome... well, so be it. If not, OTOH, that makes me a little less likely to sign up to be an early human test subject. :)

Re:The dog died.

[J'ai Friedpork]

Second. I for one would like to know whether the dog died because of the treatment, in spite of it, or because they had to do an autopsy. Probably the latter, but the fact that they didn't specify it is a little worrying.

Re:The dog died.

[crackp1pe]

Linux killed a dog? It must have been using ReiserFS, I hear it's a killer file system.

Re:The dog died.

[RiotingPacifist]

Did they go for yellow dog or puppy?

Re:The dog died.

[MiniMike]

It was in a EULA printed on the back of a doggy treat: 'By eating this buscuit, you agree to be bound and dissected by the terms of this agreement...'

Awesome

[timeOday]

For the big dollars that surgeons pull down, they are after all performing mostly rote procedures for the most part. When you can replace a decade of training a person with a simple file copy to load software on to a robot, think of the savings that represents. Health care costs are a big drag on our standard of living in all other areas and it's only getting worse. Not to mention the millions who die around the world because they simply cannot afford the procedures. I'm by no means saying this technology is ready or that I'd be willing to go under the robo-knife at this point, but I'm sure glad they're working on it.

Re:Awesome

[HuguesT]

Of course replacing a surgeon with a reliable fully automated robot would be great.

However your description of surgery is not correct. Surgery is difficult, minutious and different for ever patient. Great surgeons must be able to plan ahead, direct a team and control all the details of a surgery procedure as it happens, as well as improvising with a cool head for hours on end if things go wrong.

It's the exact opposite of rote procedure. Especially now with recent advances in real-time non-invasive imaging and haptic instruments procedures change all the time.

Re:Awesome

[Free the Cowards]

How very appropriate, to have your sight both destroyed and restored by the same man's products!

It's not a Beowulf Cluster

[russlar]

Does this qualify as a Beowoof Cluster?